MARK TREMONTI BIOGRAPHY

Mark Thomas Tremonti (born April 18, 1974) is the lead guitarist for the American rock band Alter Bridge, but is most known as the former guitarist for the popular late 90's/early 00's band Creed. Tremonti writes music, lyrics and contributes backing vocals.

Early life

Mark Tremonti was born and raised near Detroit, Michigan. He listened to hard rock and metal music like KISS, Celtic Frost, and Metallica. At the age of 11, he bought his first guitar. It was a Tara, which was a Gibson Les Paul copy and cost about 25 dollars. Mark then attended music lessons but decided to quit because the teacher would not teach the style that he wanted, "They were teaching me 'Mary Had A Little Lamb' when I wanted to learn 'Master of Puppets'." Instead, Tremonti learned guitar autodidactically with tab books.

"Creed" era

After high school,Tremonti went to Florida State University, there he met up with singer Scott Stapp, whom he knew from high school, and started writing music. Contrary to the common belief, Tremonti and Stapp were not friends in high school, they knew of each other but hung out in different crowds. Together, Tremonti and Stapp held auditions for a bassist and a drummer that resulted in the selection of Scott Phillips and Brian Marshall. They named themselves "Naked Toddler" but finally settled on "Creed".

"Alter Bridge" era

Since Creed split up, Mark has worked with many different guitarists and musicians such as Michael Angelo Batio, Thomas Gospodareck, and Fozzy. He took extensive lessons from guitarist Troy Stetina. He stated, “After all Creed achieved professionally, I felt that I needed to refocus on the goals that I had personally. One of those goals was to get back to my rock and roll roots. After Creed took a break, band-mate Scott Phillips and I started to jam together again and realized that we both shared the same vision and were surprisingly anxious to get back out there and start doing it again." . They then got together with ex-Creed bassist Brian Marshall and recruited former Mayfield Four vocalist Myles Kennedy to create Alter Bridge.

info : wikipedia